Richard Pipes

Richard Pipes, according to his Benador Associates' biography, has been a "Professor of History at Harvard University for over 40 years, [and] is one of the world's leading authorities on Soviet, Russian and Caucasian history. His expertise has led governments, organizations, and publications to seek out his advice.

"In addition to being a senior professor at Harvard, Richard Pipes has served as Director of Harvard's Russian Reasearch Center (1968-73), as an expert for the Russian Constitutional Court (1992), as Director of the National Security Council's East European and Soviet Affairs team (1981-82), as a member of the State Department's Reagan Transition Team (1980), and as Chairman of the CIA's "Team B" to Review Strategic Intelligence Estimates (1976). He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Mr. Pipes is a member of the editorial boards of Strategic Review, Orbis, International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Continuity, Journal of Strategic Studies, East European Jewish Affairs, and Nuova Storia Contemporanea..

"Richard Pipes is the author of 18 published books, the most recent being Communism: A Brief History (2001, Random House), Land-tenure in Pre-Roman Antiquity and its Political Consequences (2001, Coambridge, Mass.), Prosperity & Freedom (1999, Alfred A. Knopf), and Three 'Whys' of the Russian Revolution (1996, Random House of Canada). His books have been published in 12 languages. Mr Pipes has also edited 6 books."

• Scholar/Advisor, International Freedom Center
• Advisory Board, Andrei Sakharov Foundation
• Advisory Board, National Committee on American Foreign Policy

Further information

[ Source: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/pipes_r/pipes_r.php Right-Web]

Richard Pipes, a Russian historian at Harvard University, was a key anti-Soviet crusader in the 1970s and 1980s. He served as a consultant to Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson (aka "the senator from Boeing") in the early 1970s, was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, and chaired the Team B Strategic Objectives Panel, a controversial effort in the mid-1970s to reinterpret CIA intelligence on the Soviet threat.

Although no longer a key rightwing player, Richard has successfully passed his hardline mantle on to his son, Daniel Pipes, a controversial neocon commentator on Middle East affairs. In 2003, when George W. Bush chose Daniel to serve on the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, the ensuing barrage of criticism prompted the president to bypass Congress and make Pipes a recess appointment to the institute.

In her book Killing Détente: The Right Attacks the CIA (1998), Anne Cahn writes: "The man finally selected to serve as chairman of the Team B Strategic Objectives Panel was Richard Pipes, a Polish immigrant and professor of Russian history at Harvard University. Pipes had consistently labeled the Soviets an aggressive imperialistic power bent on world domination. He had been 'discovered' by Richard Perle, who convinced his boss, Senator Henry Jackson, to hire Pipes as a consultant." (5)

Pipes also played an instrumental role in selecting other Team B participants, including Paul Wolfowitz. In an interview with Cahn, Pipes said, "I picked Paul Wolfowitz [who at the time was working as special assistant for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT] because Richard Perle recommended him so highly."

As part of the Team B exercise, Pipes and his esteemed team of outside experts--which also included William Van Cleave (and counted on the support of John S. Foster and Donald Rumsfeld in oppostion to realpolitikers like Henry Kissinger, who saw the exercise as being hazardous to U.S.-Russian relations (7))--were charged by then-CIA head George H.W. Bush with assessing National Intelligence Estimates regarding Soviet strategic capabilities and intentions. Although the purported purpose of the exercise was to come up with an unbiased analysis of the Soviet threat, according to Cahn "the Team B experiment was concocted by conservative cold warriors determined to bury détente and the SALT process. Panel members were all hard-liners. The experiment was leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an 'October surprise.' But most important, the Team B reports became the intellectual foundation of 'the window of vulnerability' and of the massive arms buildup that began toward the end of the Carter administration and accelerated under President Reagan." (6)

Pipes is the author of several books, including The Russian Revolution, Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, and Property and Freedom. In 1992, Pipes served as an expert witness in the Russian Constitutional Court's trial against the Communist Party.

His son is Daniel Pipes, the extreme right-wing Zionist.

Related Organizations

• American Committee for Peace in Chechnya Board of Directors